Would you rather purchase a dying forum or create your own?

Well, I thought this question would be an interesting one because what if there was a dying forum that had a few thousand posts - would you rather purchase it, merge it, or possibly get it going again - or you rather just start your own forum?

 

Starting a new forum is very hard, people see a site with less then 100 threads or 1,000 post and generally pass it up.
These days I would rather (and have) bought an established forum and gone from there.
I've started forums in the past from scratch and done well with them as well.

 

I prefer starting a new forum than purchasing a dying forum, Heck, I hate to purchase forums due to the way people think.

The forum will originally be flooded with crap ( I'm not saying that all are like this ) if it has 10, 000 posts while the latest posts looks legit and there's normally fake/spammer accounts logging in.
I've even seen people purchase new domains just to set it up with a database with XXXXXX posts and try to make a quick dollar from it. ( posts were scraped from other forums )
It's a lot of work reviewing each and every post from the XXXXXX number.

Most of these guys I've seen are from Digital Point ( as I said, NOT all people do this, btw ) .
Don't get me started with the PhotoShoped Google Analytics/Adsense stats, ( and if you leave negative feedback on their profile, most likely they're going to do the same to you, )
I might just have to post one here the next time I see one,

 

I also would prefer to start a new forum than buying a dead one. Buying one takes out all the fun.

 

For my some projects I'm planning a year or so out, I'll be 'pulling a Brandon'; Start a new board then buy and merge some older/smaller boards into it. It looks like it has worked well over on GF.

 

That's one of the best ways to do it. If I had the money I'd do the same.

 

I wouldn't buy a dead forum and try and resurrect it, I would buy some smaller ones and merge them to an existing board though.

 

I would rather not spend money to purchase a dying forum, especially since I may have to make changes and that might actually take longer than creating a new one!

 

I would prefer starting my own forum. I don't want any ghosts good or bad from previous members, admin or owners. I alo want to be as original as possible. I like using my own ideas, from scratch. Even if it means doing all the work myself. I would hate to have a thriving awesome forum, and someone else saying, oh yeah I started that. Like they were the reason for the success.

 

That's actually a good idea because if the small communities have a good community going on, merging it with yours would make it even more active.

 

Well starting a new one is the hardest ever, mine is 2.5 years old and still takes a lot of work to keep it going, I think it will take several more years to get it to self sustain itself. If I found a forum that was in the same genre I would purchase it and merge for the posts alone to help build more content on my site and add the members to the email list.

 

I would rather create my own Its more real if you do it all yourself

 

All depends really, what exactly the statistics of the dying forum are and how long they have been dying for, and what type of forum it is. but i suppose if its roughtly the same topic/niche you are watching to create then i would say purchase a dying forum as you can turn it around and help it grow again.

 

I guess it depends on why the forum is dying in the first place. If it's dying due to bad management or lack of interest from the previous owner, sure, why not? If the forum is dying for another reason (subject matter outdated ect) then probably not.

Starting your own forum is fun, but there's a lot of challenges to it. The main one being actually getting people interested enough to signup and post.

 

Create my own. That way I know I won't inherit any debt, complaints from other people, etc. Besides, then you can create things as you want them.

 

Definitely start a new forum
Sure a dying forum has posts on it already, but its dying, members arent coming anymore .. And there is a reason for that.. Maybe that niche has worn out or whatever?
Starting your own gives you more flexibility on the name of the site, the niche, the types of members you want to attract and whatnot

 

Well I'd go with a dying forum. There are plenty of ways to make a forum active again and by using an existing forum I can avoid the problems associated with startups. However before buying a dying forum, I'd like to investigate what ails it or whether or not it has suffered search engine related issues such as Google slap or sandbox among others.

 

If me, I would start the new forum from beginning. If you start from very active Facebook page or Twitter, it's not too hard to find traffics soon when you start build forum community.

 

Dying forums come with an 'agenda'. They're not dying without a reason so you might find yourself with a database of users that are not coming back. I have done some reviving on my own on a forum and it was better to actually delete it and start from zero than to revive it. Careful

So I'd rather start one on my own. I have merged a forum back in the day in my niche (the admin was tired of managing and she donated the entire forum to me) and I was able to get back mayb 3% of the members. Surely not worth the hassle.